The Lehigh Valley is the third most populous Metropolitan Statistical Area in the state of Pennsylvania with a population of 821,173 residents as of the 2010 U.S. Census.[2] The region is eclipsed in total population in Pennsylvania only by the metropolitan areas of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metropolitan areas.[2] It is the 64th most populated metropolitan area in the United States. Lehigh County, the Valley's largest county in terms of overall population, is among the fastest growing in the state and, as of 2010–2012, ranks in the 79th percentile for population growth nationally. The core population centers are located in southern and central Lehigh and Northampton counties along U.S. Route 22 and Interstate 78. The Lehigh Valley is proximate to two of the nation's largest cities: New York City, which is about 75 miles to its east, and Philadelphia, which is 50 miles to its southeast.

In March 2014, the Lehigh Valley was recognized by Site Selection Magazine as the second-best performing region of its size for economic development in the United States.[7] It was also ranked by Fortune in May 2015 as being among the top 10 best places in the U.S. to locate corporate finance and information technology operations for companies, such as call centers and IT support.[8] Allentown, the region's largest city, was cited as a "national success story" in April 2016 by the Urban Land Institute for its downtown redevelopment and transformation, one of only six communities nationwide to achieve this distinction.[9]

The Lehigh Valley is located approximately 60 mi (97 km) north of Philadelphia, 80 mi (130 km) northeast of Harrisburg, and 90 mi (140 km) west of New York City, the country's largest city. The area is home to more than 820,000 people as of the 2010 U.S. Census. Recent census studies show it to be the fastest growing region in Pennsylvania, due in part to its growing popularity as a bedroom community for the highly populated neighboring regions of Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York City as well as its favorable business climate and much lower cost of living in comparison to surrounding areas.[12]

The Lehigh Valley has seen an influx of residents coming from New Jersey and New York to take advantage of the reduced cost of living. The population of the area is expected to increase by 227,000 people by 2040.[16]

The most common industries for residents in are area include educational services, construction and health care as of 2009.[17] The Lehigh Valley was recognized by business publication Site Selection Magazine in March 2014 as being the second-best performing region of its size for economic development in the entire United States.[7]

The Lehigh Valley is known historically for its production of steel, Portland cement and apparel. It had served as a major U.S. center of industrial manufacturing since the 1800s but this role had diminished significantly in the late 20th century and early 21st century as companies moved to offshore locations for these activities.

Once a formidable industrial and manufacturing powerhouse serving the entire United States, the nationwide decline of this industry in the late 20th century and early 2000s led the Lehigh Valley to shift its economic focus more towards financial services, health care, life sciences and technology as well as becoming a distribution hub for some of the largest U.S. markets due to its comparatively low cost of living and proximity to some of the nation's largest metropolitan areas.[18]

However, a recent movement to reestablish manufacturing activities in the United States driven by customer demand for American made products, faster product delivery, increased overseas wages, and inflated costs of shipping has led to a sizeable increase in the local manufacturing base and rapidly growing interest in the region. Few other areas in the country are able to offer such comparatively low costs of living and doing business, including low energy costs, tax incentives and overnight distribution access to more than one-third the total population of the United States. Several large manufacturing companies from countries such as China and Germany have already invested tens of millions of dollars into establishing significant operations in the Lehigh Valley with the potential to create thousands of new local jobs in this sector.[19]

The Lehigh Valley is centrally located in the Northeast Megalopolis with ease of access and close proximity to several of the largest markets, population centers, airports, terminals, railways and seaports in the United States including both the New York City and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. The Lehigh Valley is also situated within a one-day drive to more than one third of the total population of the United States and more than one half of the total population of Canada.[21][22]

The Lehigh Valley has a lower cost of living, more affordable real estate, lower taxes and a more affordable labor pool than most other Northeastern US regions.[17] These attributes and others, such as sizable investments in business development and a friendlier regulatory environment, provide the area with an attractive business climate in comparison to surrounding states and areas.[12][22][23][24][25]

Due in large part to the aforementioned comparably favorable business climate, the Lehigh Valley has experienced success in luring large, established businesses as well as new startup companies from nearby states such as New York and New Jersey, bringing with them upwards of thousands of new jobs to the area.[12][26] Large companies such as Amazon.com have praised the region for its commitment to business investments and incentives, citing them as a major reason for continuing expansions and increased hiring in the Lehigh Valley.[27][28]

Further reaffirming this advantageous business and economic environment, the Lehigh Valley was recognized by business publication Site Selection Magazine in March 2014 as being the second-best performing region of its size for economic development in the United States.[7] It was also ranked by Fortune in May 2015 as being amongst the top 10 best places in the U.S. to locate corporate finance and information technology operations for companies, such as call centers and IT support.[8]

FedEx Ground has chosen to construct their largest shipping terminal in the country in the Lehigh Valley near the international airport. This new terminal, upon completion, will process up to 75,000 packages per hour and employ hundreds of people. It is anticipated to open in late 2018 at a cost of over $335 million to build.[30]

The Boston Beer Company operates its largest production brewery facility in the Lehigh Valley (in Breinigsville), which produces more than 2/3rds of all Samuel Adams beer in the world. The company continues to upgrade and expand operations at this facility and has cited the location as central to the company's success.[31]

Ocean Spray, maker of juice drinks and other fruit products, produces 40 percent of its total national beverage volume at its plant in Breinigsville.[32]

Due to Pennsylvania's lack of an excise tax on cigars, the Lehigh Valley is also home to some of the United States' largest cigar distributors and retailers.[33]

Pennsylvania is ranked 19th in the nation in the production of renewable, notably solar, energy.[34] The Lehigh Valley boasts one of the largest solar panel installations in Pennsylvania and is a leading producer of solar and other renewable energy in the region. As an example, Air Products & Chemicals, in Trexlertown, installed and maintains a 15-acre solar farm which generates more than half the required electricity for their corporate headquarters, saving an estimated $250,000 per year in utility costs. The comparatively large solar industry in the Lehigh Valley is due mostly to a combination of federal, state and local incentive programs which make using renewable energy sources more cost effective than in years past.[34]

Yocco's Hot Dogs, the regionally-famous fast food establishment known for their hot dogs and cheesesteaks, maintains six locations, all of which are based in the Lehigh Valley. Its original restaurant, founded in 1922, is still located at its original center city Allentown location, on West Liberty Street. Five additional Yocco's locations can be found in the Lehigh Valley (in west-side Allentown, east-side Allentown, Emmaus, Fogelsville, and Wescosville).

The Lehigh Valley is part of the Philadelphia television market, and also receives television stations from New York City and Scranton/Wilkes Barre. Lehigh Valley-based stations include WBPH-TV, an affiliate of FamilyNet, a Christian network licensed to Bethlehem, with studios in Allentown; WFMZ-TV, an independent commercial television station atop South Mountain in Allentown; and WLVT-TV, a PBS station licensed to Allentown with studios in Bethlehem.

The largest Lehigh Valley high schools (18 in all) compete athletically in the East Penn Conference. Smaller Lehigh Valley high schools compete in the Colonial League. In addition to its exceptional high school athletic teams, the Lehigh Valley is known nationally for its excellent math team, the Lehigh Valley Fire. The team won the ARML competition in 2005, 2009, 2010, and 2011. They have placed in the top 10 teams nationally every year since 2009.[36]

Groundbreaking ceremonies for Coca-Cola Park were held September 6, 2006, and construction was completed in December 2007. The stadium hosted its first game on March 30, 2008, when the Phillies major league team faced the IronPigs.

In March 2011, plans were announced for the creation of PPL Center, an 8,500-seat arena to be built in Allentown as the home for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, the American Hockey League affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers. The Phantoms began play in Allentown starting with the 2014–15 season. The arena is located in downtown Allentown taking up the entire block between 7th and 8th Streets and Hamilton Boulevard and Linden Street. In a controversial decision, the city had declared eminent domain to help obtain the necessary properties and a contractor was chosen in 2012. Buildings on the site began to be demolished to make room for the new arena in January 2012.[39]

The 12 largest high schools in the Lehigh Valley compete athletically in the East Penn Conference. The conference has produced numerous professional and Olympic-level athletes, and its football, basketball and wrestling teams are often ranked among the best in the nation. In USA Today's annual ranking of the nation's top high school sports teams, Liberty High School was ranked second in the Eastern United States in football in 2008 and 20th among all high schools nationally. Parkland High School was ranked fifth in the East in football in 2002 and 11th among all high schools nationally. And Allentown Central Catholic High School was ranked seventh in girls' basketball in the East in both 2001–02 and 2002–03.[41]

Lehigh Valley Rollergirls (LVRG) is a women's flat track roller derby league based in the Lehigh Valley. Founded in January 2006, Lehigh Valley Rollergirls was the first skater-operated flat track roller derby league in the Lehigh Valley. LVRG is a member of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association and competes against national and international teams. It hosts its home matches at Hamburg Field House in Hamburg.

The Lehigh Valley Health Network Via Marathon, which features a certified marathon, a five-person team relay, a 20-mile (32 km) training run and 5K walk is also held annually in September. The 42.195-kilometre (26.219 mi) course follows the Lehigh River Canal Towpath from Allentown to Easton. The marathon came under scrutiny in 2015 when Mike Rossi achieved viral fame after allegedly cheating in the marathon to qualify for the Boston Marathon. In response, Via Marathon organizers added timing mats and video surveillance on-course.[42]

Runner's World magazine, which is based out of Emmaus, has held the Runner's World Half Marathon and Festival in Bethlehem every October since 2012.

Lehigh University's Paul Short Run is held annually at the Goodman Cross Country Course and participation has climbed to over 5,000 runners spread throughout 14 college and high school races. The Emmaus 5K race is held annually in mid-October, coinciding with Emmaus' annual Halloween parade.[43]

The Allentown Art Museum, based in center city Allentown, is the Lehigh Valley's largest museum. The museum's collection includes more than 11,000 works of art. Lehigh University's Zoellner Arts Center and Lafayette College's smaller Williams Center for the Arts host a wide variety of plays, concerts and performances throughout the year.

Bethlehem is also home to ArtsQuest, a non-profit that promotes Visual and Performing Arts in the Lehigh Valley. The ArtsQuest center and Steelstacks campus on the site of the former Bethlehem Steel Company have several performing arts venues including the Levitt Pavilion and the Musikfest Cafe. The Banana Factory in Southside Bethlehem has several art studios and galleries open to the public.

Artsquest also hosts Musikfest every year in August. Musikfest is the largest free music festival in the country, bringing more than 1 million people to the region annually.

Dutch Springs, the nation's largest SCUBA amusement park, is in Bethlehem and Lower Nazareth Township. Over 40,000 divers annually utilize the facilities, which have sunken "treasures" to enhance the underwater experience. In addition to scuba diving, kayaking and paddle boats are available. The facility has a water park, camping grounds, and picnic areas.

In 2009, Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem, an $879 million casino, hotel and apartment complex owned by the Las Vegas Sands, opened in Bethlehem, bringing legalized gambling to the Lehigh Valley for the first time. It is one of only 13 authorized gaming sites in Pennsylvania.

Many large festivals are held each year in the Lehigh Valley. Musikfest, a large, 10-day music festival, is held in Bethlehem each August. In September, one of the largest Celtic heritage festivals in America, The Celtic Classic, is held in Bethlehem. The Great Allentown Fair has been held on the grounds of the Allentown Fairgrounds in Allentown annually in late August through early September for more than 150 years. Das Awkscht Fescht is an antique car festival that is held annually the beginning of August in Macungie's Memorial Park. "Blues, Brews, and Barbeque," which launched in 2014, is held annually at Cedar Beach Park on Lake Muhlenberg.[45][46][47]

Ice skating (including ice hockey, figure skating and speed skating) is popular in the Lehigh Valley and the region has three facilities. The Steel Ice Center is the premier ice skating facility, in Bethlehem on East 1st Street, not far from the Sands Casino. The Rink, formerly Lehigh Valley Ice Arena, is in Whitehall (north of Allentown) just off MacArthur Road (Route 145) on 7th Street. Each facility has two ice surfaces and public skate times are available at both facilities. The City of Bethlehem also opens a covered outdoor rink (one ice surface) annually from November through March.

The number of people using the airport fell by 24.3% from 723,556 in 2012 to 582,000 in 2014[48] and the airport had seen declines in passenger usage from the early 2000s when annual traffic twice hit levels above 1,000,000 passengers. It has, however, lately experienced a steady rebound in passenger traffic due to being a preferable alternative to the highly congested airports in Philadelphia and Newark, new improvements to its facilities and amenities, a fast growing regional population, and the addition of new routes. In 2016 it serviced 688,505 passengers, an increase of 2.2% from 2015.[49][50][51]

Amazon.com leverages the Lehigh Valley International Airport (LVIA) as one of only 11 locations in the country for their Prime Air shipping service. LVIA was one of the first airports selected for the pilot concept of the program due to its close proximity to large population centers, cost effectiveness, robust infrastructure, and comparative ease of use. This location now ships more merchandise, has more flights, and serves more people (over 75 million from Boston to Washington, D.C. as of late 2016) for Amazon than any other facility in the country. Both Amazon and LVIA continue to invest heavily in the local area to better support the ever-increasing demand for air cargo driven in large part by the explosion of e-commerce and the need for faster, more efficient delivery of merchandise.[52]

Due to the same aforementioned reasons for Amazon increasing its operations at the airport, FedEx Ground has selected an area near LVIA to construct its largest terminal in the country.[30] As of 2016, the airport ships more than 126 million pounds of cargo annually with growth of nearly 166% in cargo tonnage shipped between 2015 and 2016 alone. Companies such as Amazon.com and FedEx Ground are increasingly using the airport for these purposes which is a major factor in its growth.[53]

Unlike similarly-sized metropolitan regions, the Lehigh Valley has very limited passenger rail service. Only Hackettstown, in far eastern Warren County, sees regular passenger railway service. Around the Valley, passenger rail only gets as close as Doylestown and Annandale, both about 30 miles away. The closest Amtrak station to Allentown is Bryn Mawr, about 41 miles to the south. The rail hubs of Philadelphia and Newark are not much further, and provide the bulk of further intercity traffic from the Lehigh Valley. Bieber and Trans-Bridge Lines provide regular bus service from all over the Valley to both Philadelphia and Newark.

In November 2008, the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation (LVEDC), along with both Lehigh and Northampton Counties, commissioned a study to explore the merits of expanding New Jersey Transit rail to the Lehigh Valley, which would potentially include stops in Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton.[57] The Lehigh Valley is currently the largest metropolitan area by population on the East Coast of the United States without passenger rail service of any kind.[58][59] If plan succeeds, the Lehigh Line will then once again host passenger services for the first time since 1961.

U.S. Route 22 is a major freeway that runs through the Valley from Kuhnsville in the western part of the Valley to Easton in the eastern part of the Valley. U.S. Route 22 starts in Cincinnati, Ohio in the west, running through the Valley to Newark, New Jersey in the east. A third highway, Pennsylvania Route 33, runs north-south through the Lehigh Valley, from the Poconos in the north to Northampton County in the south.

Other major roads in the Valley include MacArthur Road (PA 145), a divided local road that leads to the Lehigh Valley Mall and its surrounding commercial district. Cedar Crest Boulevard, a north-south highway, runs from North Whitehall Township in the north through west-side Allentown to Emmaus in the south. Lehigh Street runs from northeast to southwest, originating in downtown Allentown and ending in Emmaus. Tilghman Street runs from Fogelsville in the west to continue as Union Boulevard into Bethlehem in the east. Tilghman Street runs through most of Allentown and also intersects with Cedar Crest Boulevard, Pennsylvania Route 100, Pennsylvania Route 309 and several other major Lehigh Valley highways.

The Lehigh Valley area was once served only by the 215area code from 1947 (when the North American Numbering Plan of the Bell System went into effect) until 1994. With the region's growing population, however, Lehigh Valley areas were afforded area code 610 in 1994. Today, the Lehigh Valley is covered by 610. An overlay area code, 484, was added to the 610 service area in 1999.[60] A plan to introduce area code 835 as an additional overlay was rescinded in 2001.[61]

^In the 1840s the LC&N established the railroad subsidiary Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad (LH&S) and had already backed quite a few others, or mining companies with company railroads. About 6 or more of these 'investment railways' were bought out and consolidated, including the Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk Railroad (SH&MC), into the LH&S which became an operating company. In the 1871, the founders having left, the new generation of LC&N management decided to lease the LH&S properties out to the Central Railroad of New Jersey, the CNJ or Jersey Central, which operated them into the 1960s. The CNJ sought and received permission to sell the historic SH&MC to a private operator, who continued to operate it as a tourist railway into the late 1930s. Today, the railroad routes built by the LC&N are still major regional transportation arteries,[10]

^ Historians split hairs with weasel words over which railroads were first, second, third, etc. and why... which criteria is more important, such as a charter date, incorporation date, completion date, or operations began date. One option is which became 'common carriers', which limits the early choices to the B&O Railroad, the SH&MC, the Delaware and Hudson Gravity Railroad, the Mohawk and Hudson Rail Road, and the shortline Granite Railroad. The B&O can claim first regular commercial common carrier runs; the SH&MC not only being earlier in actual operation, but also the first to carry passengers (1827) and then paying passengers (1829), all as a subsidiary component to the LC&N. It later began carrying common cargoes and passengers to Summit Hill, at that point a company mining camp. While all three survived into the 1930s, none of the other chartered railroads operated before 1829, only the Granite Railroad of Quincy.

^Mean monthly maxima and minima (i.e. the highest and lowest temperature readings during an entire month or year) calculated based on data at said location from 1981 to 2010.

^Official records for Allentown were kept at Allentown Gas Company from March 1922 to December 1943, and at Lehigh Valley Int'l since January 1944. For more information, see ThreadEx.

^Virtually all the LH&S trackage is managed and operated by either the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad (RBM&N) or Norfolk-Southern Railway and generated rental income for LC&N Co. until the 1960s collapse of many Eastern railways before the CONRAIL consolidation in the 1970s.